Sunday, February 26, 2012

The New Old West - Only East

Let the Zaniness Begin.  Oops I Mean Continue.

As I sit here in Tucson, enjoying the winter sunshine, I come across daily reminders that I am in one of the two craziest countries in North America, which is pretty easy since there are only two.  You could easily conclude that we are in some third world region where rule of law is whatever the political leader de jour says it is.  I am not as close to the zaniness going on in Canada currently, only because I am 2,200 miles away, and have the buffer of the heart of America to block it out.  Besides, down here nobody has ever heard of Canada (kidding - That's where they ski all year, and live in igloos).

But, you can hardly live in a conservative part of America and not have unfettered access to loons, goons, and baboons making new laws out of whatever tickles their fancy, and forgetting that the USA has the history of a beautiful and profound Declaration of Independence as its foundation, and a pretty solid Constitution, complete with many meaningful Amendments.

The First Amendment states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
 
But, if the Commander in Chief will not respect that, as we have seen with the recent HHS mandate, how can we expect a lowly judge in Pennsylvania to do differently.

The judge in a case of an attack by a Muslim man on an atheist dressed up as a Zombie Muhammad.  He happened to be beside another atheist dressed as a Zombie Pope.

Judge Mark Martin is an Iraq war veteran, and a convert to the religion of peace.  So, be might be a bit biased.  Besides that, he does not seem to know much about American jurisprudence.

The judge declared that the plaintiff, our Zombie Muhammad atheist, was a "doofus."  Well, he was correct on that one, but that was his best shot.   In that article linked here, "Judge Martin stated that the First Amendment of the Constitution does not permit people to provoke other people. . . . In effect, Perce was the perpetrator of the assault, in Judge Martin's view, and Elbayomy the innocent. The Sharia law that the Muslim attacker followed trumped the First Amendment."

If the Catholics had attacked the other "doofus", the case for assault would have prevailed, since we don't have Catholic sharia law, or its equivalent, I guess.

The law is the law, except where I don't want it to be, and have enough power to make it be something else.

It does get better, so read the article.